


There Will Come Soft Rains

by InterstellarToaster



Series: The Batman Family and You [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 12:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21197882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterstellarToaster/pseuds/InterstellarToaster
Summary: Jason Todd is dead.He is dead, when you wake up and stare blankly out the window. And he is still dead as you walk downstairs- past his silent room- and your empty eyes glance over the newspaper.Yes, your son is dead. He’s dead, and he will still be dead after your breakfast, and he’ll still be dead as you sit in the garden, and nothing will bring him back as you hold in the screams.





	There Will Come Soft Rains

**Author's Note:**

> Oops! All Angst ™

Jason Todd is dead.

He is dead, when you wake up and stare blankly out the window. And he is still dead as you walk downstairs- past his silent room- and your empty eyes glance over the newspaper. 

Yes, your son is dead. He’s dead, and he will still be dead after your breakfast, and he’ll still be dead as you sit in the garden, and nothing will bring him back as you hold in the screams.

Jason Todd is dead.

You love Bruce to pieces. He’s charming, he’s thoughtful, and he’s honest and witty and rough without cutting. You’ve been married for years now- years, and years more- and never once have you regretted it. Even when you found out that he was Batman, you just took it in stride. A smile, and a promise for him to stay safe.

You love him. And yet, today, right now... you don’t.

You can’t.

How can you? Your son is dead. Every single plant in the garden seems to cry out with you, all trees swaying and grass curling and petals throwing themselves to an earthly and early death. Your little jaybird is dead, and it’s not Bruce’s fault, no, but you can’t help but blame him anyway.

(Why did he take Jason with him?)

(Why didn’t he look for him?)

(Why?)

It’s bitter, all the way down. And the most bitter part of all, you feel curdle in your heart, as Bruce steps outside and looks at you. You’re shrouded in green falling leaves and weeping willow strands, and he doesn’t step farther than the patio. You think the crying frightens him. Not your crying; the trees.

“Honey-“

“You won’t do it, will you?”

Silence. Your question hangs like a noose, quiet and unassuming and yet all the more deadly for it. A young flower bud jumps to its doom in front of you, red strewn across the pavement in a morbid show, and the weeping willow mourns. 

“I can’t,” Bruce sounds desperate, and torn, and resigned, and so much more. You can’t blame him. You’re asking the impossible, in some ways:

“It’s only fair. The Joker killed our son, we kill him.”

And the Joker has killed a hundred other sons, too. Sons and fathers and sister and mothers and everything, everyone, he doesn’t discriminate and he is liberal with his executions. You respect your husband, and you love him, but you’ve only ever tolerated his fear of killing up to a point. Up to some nonexistent point, that you never thought you’d reach, until here you are, sitting in a dying garden, feeling all the life drain from your own eyes too.

“Please,” and now you’re begging, “Please.”

Bruce just closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to see you like this, and he can’t change his answer, and he can’t stand to watch you die too.

“I’m... I’m sorry.” 

And then he walks away.

The garden is quiet, in that special way, as the willow cries and the too-young flowers die and you hold a hand out to catch a bud before it hits the ground. It’s fragile, in your hands. 

Jason is dead. And as you harden your eyes and sever your heart, you die with your garden. 

If Batman can’t do it, then you’ll have to make do.

You were never a hero. You weren’t ever a villain, either. You’re just you. You, with some strange kind of power- over plants, of all things. Not even particularly useful; you can’t control, you just direct. When you’re happy, they’re happy. When you’re sad, they’re sad. Generally, you’re quite happy, so all that you really get is extra apples from trees and beautiful flowers that bloom, and everything else one might hope for.

Not particularly useful. Though, sometimes it has its moments. 

Like when you’re angry.

“Poison Ivy, eat your heart you,” you hiss, full of directionless venom, as you stride towards the Arkham Asylum and watch the forest overtake it.

The Joker isn’t here. You already know that. You walk through the halls at a nearly collected pace, like you’re at some red carpet event- it might as well be, though, with the cameras focused on you, with the elaborate costume you wear. It’s all treebark and vines and ancient things, and you can feel the world around you quiver with rage as you delve deeper into the asylum. No, the Joker isn’t here.

But Harley is.

You reach her cell after a few minutes. The whole interior here is being choked by plants, and Harley looks excited for all of a moment, before that quiet confusion overtakes her. You imagine you look quite frightening. Especially when you simply walk through the glass of her cell.

“Dr. Quinzel,” your voice, greeting and grating. Your head scraps the top of the cell room, and the vines that suddenly flood into the room are begging you to do something. They want to fight and kill and blood, and you’re glad that it’s only Harley in here. She doesn’t make you angry; just sad.

“I’m only going to ask you this once,” and then you lean in a little, making your voice quiet, making yourself calm, even as the demand booms and cracks windows, “Where is he?”

And when she answers, you leave her a flower as you go.

You’re halfway to your destination, when Nightwing finds you. Batman’s still busy at the asylum, and you’re grateful. 

Your firstborn son stares at you warily. He doesn’t recognize you, and he’s still unsteady from crying all of today, even if he hides it well. You tilt your head.

“It’s okay,” you whisper, “It’s okay,” and you imagine you look quite terrifying, with your sharp edges and your blood eyes and the way the bark has gnarled into your skin. You step forward. He steps back.

“I’m sorry, but you need a permit to grow things up here,” Dick smiles. Wobbly at the edges. 

“It’s not your fault he died. It’s not your fault,” the words slip off your tongue, and it’s just enough to get him off balance, just enough for the lavender to coil around him and then struggle, once, before sleep.

When you leave, you make sure to hide him somewhere safe, and you make sure that the Catwoman sees you go. 

You reach the warehouse without issue. In a way, you’re glad, because that means it’ll finally be over. You’re tired and rotted and everything hurts, feels like your chest is caving open and the vines are embedding in your skin. You’re directing the plants, tugging them along, but now they’re directing you too. It won’t be log until there’s only one being left, to direct and be directed. You’ll make sure to be fast.

Or maybe you’ll take this slow. It would be so much more worth it that way.

The warehouse is open. The main room has a gaggle of around twenty men, and as you walk inside, they all stutter and stop. A few of them begin to run. The others decide to fight.

Fight isn’t a very nice word for it, though, as the plants suddenly swarm the room and, a blink, and there’s nothing. Broken bones and fresh blood- they’re all alive, and you won’t kill them, you promised that you wouldn’t, you’re only here for one. Instead, you begin the trudge upstairs. You catch sight of yourself in a mirror, and you hurry faster.

One door at the end of the hall. It’s open. You walk in, close the door behind yourself, and stare down at the Joker. He looks up at you like you’re boring.

“Oh. Oh, now, who are you?” he drawls, in that distinctive voice. He’s been drawing something on his desk, but he pushes it away to stand up, “You’re no Batsy. Here for a tussle then? I gotta warn you, I’m tougher than I look,” and then he fakes throwing a punch, laughing. You just stand there.

Just getting angrier.

“Sheesh. Tough crowd,” and he turns around, suddenly interested and getting your attention or approval, pushing through a bin of something and then grabbing bit of cloth. It’s yellow, actually. Yellow on one side, and black on the other.

He turns to you.

“This one will really make you laugh,” he promises, and he covers his hand with the cloth, he smiles wide, he does that awful laugh and that little twitch of the eye that says, ‘_I’m about to do something mean and I know I’ll get away with it_’. 

But all you can see is the little cape in his hands, and the way it’s stained red at the edge.

He doesn’t even get to pull it away to show off whatever horrible trick he was going to do, because then the door to the office explodes, and all the windows, and parts of the wall, and every single plant with a grudge is rushing forward and-

A singular, wet sound. Disturbing. Like a wet lightbulb shattering. You watch it, because you have to, because you want to. It makes you smile. Flower buds burst open across the room, sickly sweet smell, thick and heavy to mask the blood.

The Joker isn’t smiling anymore.

You don’t think he expected to die. You imagine that he wanted to see how far he could push Batman, and he was so delighted to find out that he could push for forever, actually. That he could push and push and no one would care. He didn’t expect that you would retaliate. He didn’t even know you existed, actually, but that’s fine, since you’re not sure you exist anymore either. Not with the dead garden and the empty funeral and the blood that slowly drips from impaled branches onto the ground.

The hand that held the cape releases, and you catch it, before it falls into a blood puddle. Then, quietly, you sit down. You don’t want to watch the Joker die anymore. You don’t want this. You just hug the cape to your chest, and shiver in the shower of too young flowers that drop overhead. 

Batman finds you three minutes later.

You think he knows. You think he knows who you are, and as he stares at the Joker’s cooling corpse, you wonder if he blames you.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, in the way that you really aren’t, except for the parts that you are. You can feel the anger cooling. You can feel the plants dying off, and you can feel yourself going with them. It’s been happening since the garden. There’s nothing Bruce could have done. You don’t blame him, except for the parts that you do.

Flowers wither around you, and Batman takes a seat.

“I’m sorry,” is what he says. Like it’s his fault. Your heart makes a final thud, and you blink, feeling the burn spread through your limbs. Wood rots and ichor hardens and you feel cold in the way that makes you wonder if this is what Jason felt like too.

You turn to Bruce. 

No words. Not enough time. There never was. You just smile instead, and then you tilt over and, oh, onto the ground. Close but not quite. Into the arms of your husband, and he doesn’t cry, he can’t cry, he always said he struggled with crying even when it hurt the most. You think he wants to cry. The willow weeps, and the garden dies, and you decide that if the price for revenge is an eye for an eye, then you’ve gotten a fair deal indeed.

Jason is dead. And now, you are too.


End file.
